The Tales and Background Research

Where our knowledge is lacking, in respect of the real world activity Beelzebub mentions, we need to educate ourselves. Beelzebub speaks of ancient civilizations, including Babylon and Egypt, where there is a partial historical record. He covers Greece and Rome, where...

The Tales and Philology

“Philology provides a better path to the truth than philosophy.” ~ George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff At the beginning of The Tales, not on the first page, but actually before the first page on the “copyright page”  we find the following paragraph: Original...

The Revision of The Tales (Part 3)

As we noted in the first posting in this series, this discussion of the revision of The Tales is not intended to be a critical take-down of the Gurdjieff Foundation’s publication of it. Mme de Salzmann ordered the revision, and it was not published until after her...

The Revision of The Tales (2)

There is an old joke that did the rounds when the first English Russian translation computer was announced. Someone who was given access to it decided to put in an English phrase, translate it into Russian and then immediately translate the Russian words back to...

The Revision of The Tales (1)

The discussion here of the revision of The Tales is not intended to be a critical broadside against the Gurdjieff Foundation’s publication of the revised version of The Tales. Several things are interesting about the 1992 revised version. Discussing them will, I...

Reading Skills and The Tales

“I have buried in this book certain bones, so that certain dogs with great curiosity and strong scent may dig down to them and, strange thing, when they have done so, are men.” ~ George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff That’s the beguiling promise Gurdjieff made. Quite...